Remembering Boo Radley
by SailorVegeta13
Summary: Three years after the end of Harper Lee's novel, the last of the Radleys both pass away. Scout reflects on everything Mr. Arthur has done for her and Jem, and finally figures out how to explain to Jem that there really is only one kind of folks in the world.


_A/N: I wrote this for a school assignment, so it'll probably be a little different from my usual style (if you compare it to my other stories). But writing is writing, and I'm pretty satisfied with the result._

It had been years since Jem broke his arm—he was sixteen—when Mr. Nathan Radley died. We'd always said he was just like his father; Maycomb County's reaction to Mr. Nathan's death was the same as it was to his father's. Never mind that they'd died of different things—they'd been considered much the same during their lifetimes, and that general opinion had not changed now that both were deceased.

To Jem and me, though, there was one major difference: we remembered very clearly how Mr. Nathan had directly affected our lives. He'd plugged, with cement, a knothole where his reclusive younger brother—Mr. Arthur "Boo" Radley—had been leaving things for Jem and me to find. I still remember most of the many things we discovered in that knothole, how we delighted over those trinkets: two ancient Indian-head good-luck pennies, wonderfully realistic soap dolls whittled in our images, a whole pack of chewing gum, a tarnished old spelling medal, and a beautiful pocket watch—just to name a few of Mr. Arthur's gifts to us. The most precious thing he'd ever given us, though, was indubitably our lives.

When they carried Mr. Nathan past our house, Calpurnia took one look at the strange, unreadable expression on Jem's face and frowned. "Don't you go bothering Mr. Arthur, now, Mister Jem."

A few years ago, she'd have been completely justified. But now...

"I won't," promised Jem tranquilly. "Say, Scout—you reckon Boo Radley'll come out now that there's no one to keep him in?" His tone of dry amusement was much like our father's; by then we both knew that Mr. Arthur kept to himself because he wanted to—not, as we'd once supposed, because his family made him.

* * *

That was a dull, warm spring afternoon. Now it was a lazy summer morning, when the sun was not sweltering as it would inevitably become in just a few hours. Jem and I stood in the front yard, the prickly dry grass tickling our bare feet as we shifted impatiently from foot to foot. We were waiting, as we did every summer, for Dill.

When my fiancé was through taking his sweet time—he'd always done so, in order to create for himself the most glorious entrance possible—Charles Baker Harris, better known to us as Dill, sauntered easily down the street to us, as though he hadn't made us wait all morning for him.

"Hey, Jean Louise." No more wild tales about "two twins hitched together" or whoever/whatever else he'd seen getting off the train; Dill was thirteen and liked to act it. He simply nodded to my brother. "Jeremy." (Jem later told me that this form of greeting was a manly show of familiarity and friendship. Having watched Atticus interact with other gentlemen, though, I was inclined to doubt my brother's word—at least on this matter.)

We stood silently for a while, regarding each other and—I reckon—taking in each other's physical changes since last summer.

Jem, I supposed, had grown taller and more solid in stance and gaze. I wasn't very sure, though, having seen him every day—taking in the gradual changes this way, I wasn't in the best position to make such observations.

For his part, Dill had also grown. Now he was at least a few inches taller than I, but still—somehow—somewhat scrawny-looking. There was something about him, though—straighter posture, maybe; definitely a new aura of self-confidence—that made him seem much more mature than he had when I'd seen him last.

Self-consciously he tugged at a pale-blond cowlick hanging between his eyes, looking as though he was trying to figure out what to say. The familiar old gesture made me smile. When he and Jem looked at me, I explained, "Remember when we first met you? You were 'goin' on seven,' and the first thing you said besides 'I'm Charles Baker Harris' was, 'I can read'."

He grinned almost involuntarily, his blue eyes lighting up in a familiar way. "That's right, I did. Well, I thought it was impressive, at the time." His laughter was as "sudden and happy" as I remembered. "Then Jem went and shot me down."

My brother snickered in a way he hadn't for quite a long time. "'Scout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born, and she ain't even started to school yet'," he remembered cheerfully. "Then we laughed at each other's names."

"You told us about Dracula," I reminded Dill.

Jem added, "And we went through all those dramas: Tarzan, The Rover Boys, Tom Swift. Good thing you showed up when you did, I s'pose; Scout was getting tired of playing whatever was left after I'd chosen."

"Oh, that reminds me!" Dill turned to me eagerly. "I heard Mr. Nathan died, coupla months ago. Did Boo come out yet? Thought he'd be..."

I glanced at Jem, who looked strangely guilty.

Of course we'd told Dill about that night, when Mr. Arthur saved us from Mr. Ewell. The latter was drunk and trying to get revenge on our father by coming after Jem and me with a knife. Even with Mr. Arthur's help, my brother's arm was awfully hurt; Mr. Tate later said that my ham costume's wire had probably saved my life.

But at that moment, I guessed that Jem hadn't told Dill what we'd figured out about the neighbor we'd only seen once. We'd been discussing background, and Jem bitterly insisted that there wasn't only one kind of folks—folks—as I'd thought; different types of folks went out of their way to spite each other, so it wasn't possible that they were all alike. And so, my brother told me, he began to understand why Boo Radley would isolate himself from the rest of Maycomb. I hadn't understood him at the time; but at twelve, I could now comprehend everything Jem had said that year.

Jem's eyes met mine, their soft brown tempered by a determined silent message: 'You tell him.'

I cleared my throat, even though Aunty was always reminding me that doing so was unladylike. "Ah—Dill?"

"Scout—what doesn't Jem want to tell me?"

"Mr. Arthur, he—"

It was then that Atticus rushed past us.

Our father was then almost fifty-three—very old in anyone's eyes, but especially in those of his offspring. If he was feeble three years ago, it was nothing compared to now. Yet he was almost running!

"Atticus, what's going on?" Jem demanded, hurrying after him. "Is—Did something happen to—"

"Jem, Scout, stay here. If you make any noise—"

I remembered those words from long ago. Another man was dying, again in the Radley Place. But Atticus hadn't been rushing that day. "Atticus, we're not going to just stand here and wait like you made us do when Mr. Radley was dyin'. I'm twelve, and Jem's sixteen. We're—"

"Don't say 'grown-up'. You're far from that, Scout, and so's Jem. But I suppose I can't make you stay here when there's more interesting things to see. You're to keep out of the house, though, you hear me? Wait for me outside."

"Yes sir."

We stood outside, in the Radley yard we'd once so feared to step on, and waited for news. It was only a few moments—but it seemed an eternity—before Atticus returned and told us what had happened.

Since Mr. Arthur had stayed in the house alone for so long, no one had caught the earliest symptoms of a rare heart disease. The last of the Radleys had been just over fifty when he died—old, but not too old to have some enjoyable life ahead of him.

"Scout?"

I buried my face in Dill's shirt as he put his arms around me in a way that Jem hadn't for so long. Try as I might, I couldn't stop my hiccupping sobs.

"He saved my life, Dill—saved me 'n' Jem—an' he left us lots of cool things, a pocket watch 'n' lots of other stuff—" An old memory surfaced. "—an' he wrapped a blanket 'round me once, when Miss Maudie's house burned down an' I was cold, standing outside 'n' watching—an'—an' he—"

"Shh, Scout, it's okay."

A new thought came to me. I looked up then, meeting Jem's gaze through a screen of tears that blurred his face. "Remember when you said there's four kinds of folks in the world?" I barely registered his nod. "Well, you were wrong then, and you're still wrong."

Despite my moment of weakness, my brother was quite visibly impatient. "I told you already, Scout, there's more'n one kind—"

I shook my head. "There's only one kind of folks. It's just that some are better'n others. An' Mr. Arthur—why, he was one of them."


End file.
